Letter from Espargal: 8 of 2007

This has been a mainly agricultural week. It has taken me the better part of two afternoons to clean up the Casanova and Graça fields (named after their former owners), both of which were disappearing under a mass of winter vegetation. If you thought this was easy work you’d be wrong.

The first step is to remove the link-box from the back of the tractor and attach the scarifier, a process that takes (me) at least 15 minutes and a lot of effort – sometimes grazed knuckles. A scarifier is a plough-like implement that rips out vegetation and turns over the soil. Unlike a plough, it doesn’t create furrows. (It tends to hook on buried rocks and tree roots, leaving the tractor wheels spinning.)

I watched a TV programme this week in which three mega tractors attached and shed their implements in a matter of seconds - just a matter of click-on and click-off. Nobody in Espargal has a tractor like that. Here one has to physically detach the hydraulic lift bar and the lower forked bars that support the implement. It’s best done on a level surface (if you can find one). Once the non-required implement has been removed, one has to back the tractor slowly and carefully up to the item to be attached. Unless the tractor is lined up exactly, it’s all but impossible to fasten the scarifier (and it weighs a ton). Gloves and a heavy iron bar are advisable.

After attaching the scarifier and tensioning the supporting bars one is ready to get to work. In a perfect world the field to be “ploughed” should be free of rocks and trees and level. Ours are real world fields; they slope and are dotted with rocks and trees. That makes life awkward, especially as the protective bar over my seat cannot hinge down (as new ones can) to avoid catching low branches.

It’s toughest working at the top of the fields where the slope is steepest. It would be simplest simply to work from top to bottom but one is meant to plough along the contour of the slope to avoid dragging the soil down.
At times I lean over the side of the tractor like a yachtsman, a posture that provokes merriment among the locals. Even so, the results of my efforts have won me praise. “You plough just like a Portuguese farmer,” a neighbour, Maria, assured me as we met on the road. (Half the women in the village are called Maria.) This is no half hearted compliment.

We took the opportunity to ask Maria about a small building which is springing up across the road from her house. Any such construction is of interest to other villagers – i.e. us. Maria explained that it was a shed intended to take a machine either to shell almonds or to grind carob beans – it wasn’t clear to us.

Like the builders of other sheds in the village, the owner of this one has not thought it necessary to go through the arduous and lengthy planning process required by the authorities. Understandably, people hereabouts prefer to avoid such cumbrous bureaucracy wherever possible. It is slightly ironic, however, that the man concerned is suspected of tipping off the building inspector about a garage that a neighbour was erecting (after the neighbour succeeded in buying a small field that both men desired).


Jones, for her part, has been labouring long and hard to remove poisoned triffids, the corpses of which have been piled on our burgeoning weed heap. “Triffids” is her name for the large broad-leafed plants that invade the place every winter. They grow to nearly two metres in height and simply take the place over (as per the next picture).

I spent two afternoons going around the property zapping them with Grammox. Two or three days later they started to turn brown and to droop – an ugly sight. Jones was disturbed (a) because we were expecting visitors and she wanted the garden to look its best and (b) because the poison had zapped a few desirable plants in the process – a case of friendly fire.

She pointed these innocent victims out to me at length, lamenting their sad state and emphasising the enormity of my actions. I know how those guys feel who sprayed agent orange all over Vietnam.

Just across the fields from us, my beans are slowly coming to maturity on David and Sarah’s plot. They ought to be ready to pick next month. Every time I pass them I resolve to return the same day to weed them and then promptly forget about my resolution.

A model example of how to tend a vegetable garden is set by elderly neighbours – a couple in their eighties - at the bottom of the village. The soil in their garden has been dug over until it has reached a smooth texture. Young plants nestle in a shallow depression of earth. Each pea plant is supported by a stick. Tender shoots are covered at night by upturned 5-litre water bottles. These are removed the following morning to allow the young plants to bathe in the spring sunshine. It is all very impressive.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday brought the usual classes. After each class I slipped down the road to Inforomba’s computer shop. First I went to purchase a Kaspersky anti-virus suite for a neighbour whom I’d talked into buying it to replace his freebie. (The suite promptly found a host of nasties on his hard disk and deleted them - satisfaction there.) But it was the Portuguese version of the program and the neighbour speaks little Portuguese. So back I went to try to replace it with an English one (easily done). What I couldn’t sort out – and Inforomba couldn’t help me – was a problem with the update function. I’ll have to take the neighbour’s computer into the shop next week.

I fear that not all is well with my subconscious, not to judge by my dreams. In one frequently recurring dream I find myself wandering around a huge building looking for someone or something – generally the newsroom. When I find it, either there’s nowhere for me to sit or the typewriter doesn’t work and I have to put a bulletin on air in an impossibly short time. In my last such dream, my boss said she was giving the workers lots of stick. “But not enough for some”, I replied. At this everybody laughed. I considered it a very witty reply, even when I woke up.

In another dream I was going to dine with several friends, only one of whom I clearly recall. (I shall let him remain anonymous.) He was querulous and accused me of “having a high regard for my own opinions”. Tired of his nonsense I proclaimed: “This is too silly,” and walked out, leaving him to dine alone. That was very satisfying.

If any readers can usefully play Moses to my troubled Pharaoh, their responses will be most kindly considered.

(Sunset - moonrise over Valapena)
Jonesy was walking the dogs the other day when she met an English neighbour who was walking hers. Suddenly, the dogs went for each other, pulling Jonesy over as they did so. I wasn’t there. She says she had the devil of a time trying to get up again and to separate them. She was not best pleased with her little darlings. Fortunately, little harm was done except to the owners’ nerves.